‘Why the hell not?’ her mother asked, clearly baffled.

‘Because today has been a good day and I don’t want an email telling me I’m a talentless wonder to take the shine off it,’ Jo admitted.

‘It’s not going to say that, Jo. C’mon!’ her mother said.

‘It might, Mum and I don’t want to ruin today with bad news.’

‘It could round it off to perfect if it’s good news?’ her mother suggested hopefully.

‘I’m not sure I want to take that chance,’ Jo replied. ‘I’m going to try and be very chill about it and not rush to read it.’

‘You’re a stronger woman than me,’ her mum said. ‘I can’t say I fully understand it, but I respect the hell out of you.’

At 12.03 a.m., Jo decided she’d had enough of being chill. Fumbling in the dark of her room, she switched her phone on and silently cursed as it seemed to take longer than ever before to start up.

Eventually it came to life, Jo opened Gmail and the email stared at her, willing her to hit the screen to open it. What could it say? She felt as if she was taking her life in her hands as she closed her eyes and swiped at the screen. She even considered waking her mum and asking her to hold her hand while she read it but decided she had to be mature, brave and just get on with it.

When she dared open her eyes, she saw that Ewan McLachlan had, quite disappointingly, sent a rather dry message.

I’ve had the chance to read the start of your book, sent to me by Libby Quinn at Once Upon A Book. As you will be aware, I will be visiting Derry on Thursday, and would appreciate having some of your time to discuss your work. Perhaps we could meet at the bookshop half an hour before the event?

Jo stared at the email as she processed all the feelings welling up inside of her.

She’d hoped to at least get a hint of how he felt about her work, but he had given her nothing to go on. But he did want to meet her, and she wouldn’t have long to wait. So while she did feel disappointed that he hadn’t given her any feedback in his message – and that she had spent hours trying to be chill about an email which neither confirmed or refuted her ability as a writer – she also knew she was lucky. This was happening. Ewan McLachlan wanted to meet her to talk about her book. In less than forty-eight hours.

She was just about to switch her phone off and try, probably in vain, to go back to sleep, when another message notification pinged.

It was a WhatsApp from Lorcan.